Gloria Ulloa with Agnes Aboum (WCC)
The ecumenical world in Latin America mourns the departure of Agnes Aboum, aged 73 in her native Kenya after a short illness. An Anglican laywoman, she became the first woman and the first African to serve as moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee in 2013, when she was elected by acclamation at the WCC’s 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea. She served until the WCC’s 11th assembly in September 2023 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Abuom served as WCC president from 1999 to 2006. Three ecumenical women from the region, who worked alongside her, remember her for ALC News.
Gloria Ulloa, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and, from 2013 to 2022 president for Latin America of the World Council of Churches, remembers her with these words:
“All our gratitude to God for giving humanity a brilliant, intelligent woman, with great capacity for mediation in moments of debates that seemed impossible to overcome within the last decade of life of the World Council of Churches, with the talent of her word, the wisdom of her heart and the wit of her humour she helped us to find ways out as moderator. Loving and steadfast, she inspired many lives through her commitment to social justice, love of neighbour, world peace, care for the planet, the economy of life, gender struggles, non-discrimination. How beautiful it was to see her alongside Pope Francis and other global leaders calling for unity and reconciliation. Forever in our hearts dear Agnes. Unforgettable.
Agnes…much sorrow for her early departure. Great loss for the ecumenical and interfaith movement. A person very committed to social justice, to peace. She broke down ethnic barriers. Simply firm and loving. Great listener and accompanier of women’s situations. A companion on the road …. THANK YOU FOR SO MUCH and REST IN PEACE, says from Argentina Ana Velilla de Medio, who was for several years part of the Committee of the World Council of Churches.
Rev. Dr Ofelia Ortega Suárez of the Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba remembers her. Ortega served the WCC from 1988 to 1996 as executive secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Programme on Theological Education, and before that, from 1985 to 1988, as a professor at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey. In 2006 she was appointed president of the World Council of Churches for Latin America and the Caribbean. She says: “The news of the death of our dear friend Dr Agnes Aboum comes at a difficult time for women’s leadership in our religious and social contexts, where feminicides, racism and extreme poverty, produce continuous suffering for women, girls and families in all geo-political contexts”.
Agnes’ pilgrimage in her Anglican Church and at the World Council of Churches constituted for us women and churches of the Global South the certain hope that it is possible to eliminate the prejudices of racism and gender inequalities that produce repression, exclusion and death, she emphatically affirms. Her black face, shining, without make-up, with a look full of passion and love, her body and head covered with the colours and turbans of her authentic African identity, allows us to trust in her, in her words, in her “theology of relationships” that united us to all Christian and religious confessions, with the certainty that faith lived under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit can captivate, reconcile and unite, she adds.
We will miss you Agnes, but you taught us to live this pilgrimage of ecumenical dedication, freed from any social or ecclesial prejudice that today accompanies your encounter with the God of LIFE.